The Peephole

What if I open the door to my apartment and there's

someone in the kitchen? I look forward to what they'll say

as I press the number seven. Once upon a time I'd check the

peephole at every creak. Straining neck, shallow breaths

as I'd peer and spy across the hall. The walls would warp into

a pooling shadow, a creeping lake, and the emptiness would

blur into a huddle of uninvited guests. One night long before all this

I had a dream, and in it I also spied through the door, glued to the hole

until an eye lined up with mine, and I woke up screaming.

Perhaps the eye caught me in the act of dreaming.

Do I glimpse the coming attractions in bed,

or do I squint and fiend outside of it to recreate my nightmares?

Anyway, the door's unlocked, and I'm compelled to hear

this stranger's story.

 

I sit by the pool, and let sirens lull, waters bubble, sky resound in its

silent scream, valleys of space and stretches of street, clothes lines

or spider webs stringing us along from multiplex

to high rise to glassy office, and the roaring negative space

washing thoughts away. I wonder if this peace is as

pure and true as that other bliss. It couldn't be as full,

and yet nature couldn't add a single particle to what I'm feeling now.

There's a rustle in the wind, that maybe I'm wrong in my marrow, that maybe

my roots twist unto themselves, gnarled on a spoiled plot, and my

eyes gaze through a tarnished lens at an idyllic globe, and

I could never save myself.

Perhaps in this serrated uncertainty I have plumbed the

hollows of conviction, and can trust in the variable

universe from which I sit. It's whoever's lurking upstairs,

allowing them to do their piece, and keeping to myself.

That's why, right now by the pool, I keep a watchful eye.

Reviews

[The Representative]

A true marvel of expression - a true marvel.


Not as a character but as a writer, you exude so much conviction - so much that I'm in no doubt you yourself know perfectly well what it is you're trying to communicate.



To read you is to feel like one's reading the definition of brilliance itself.

[TheSearcher]

I like it. The fear, the stream of consciousness and the possibilities.....POSSIBILITIES~